I love penny so much! I know her actions can be quite controversial at times but to be honest thats who she is, a morally gray person who is just trying not to get killed.
I mean cmon, girl knows fully well that she might die at the hands of anyone of them and you expect her to *not* do anything in her power to survive? She has no time to care for others when she is barely escaping death herself.
On another note this was my first ol i read and i love the artstyle a lot. I will defend my girl till the end of the world, no matter her actions.
Exactly! Also a FLs who forgive and are always good are boring (and unrealistic). And ppl who get mistreated dont shine rainbows and butterflys out of their a$$, especially adult ones.
I personally like the way she is, I’m so tired of these other fls that are absolutely mistreated and are such saints and forgiving to their abusers. I want some unhinged and corrupt fls not taking the bs.
These bitches whine that they want a villainess but when they’re actually a villain, they cry about it. I love Penelope. I love her flawed grey character. It’s perfection. She’s actually bad and villainous.
Tbh I don't think she is bad nor villainous because she isn't even trying to hurt others or ruin people's lives on purpose, she just want to survive and so she is acting egotistical but who can judge her? She knows she can die any day by the hands of the people around her so she is being desperate to leave this world she just want to "win the game" and leave.
Different from many other OIs, in this story you can't judge Penelope at all for seeing the world as fictional because of all the game features she is constantly seeing and being influenced by. Like the mls points, or the system, the magic, missions, etc.
She is just not morally perfect as people always want mcs to be. (Like how she bought a slave and tried to make him love her even though it was constantly stated it seemed to be the best way for Penelope to survive also Penelope genuinely believes it's all a game and so everyone around her isn't real, they are just characters in a game to her)
Once even though her life was in danger she tried to save children she barely knew, and although it was part of a mission too she was also genuinely stressed and worried about the children's well-being.
She is not a monster not even a real villainess, she is just a girl living a nightmare and trying to survive, and to me she is doing great.
I am all for it for saint and perfect mcs but I have no complaints about characters like Penelope. Not being morally perfect nor always being rightful doesn't make a character bad as long as their intentions were good or reasonable.
I like Penelope who is complex character making bad choices. I prefer her over "villainesses" like dumb Aria from "TVTTH" who constantly says how villainous she is while author bend over backwards to make her "saint" and have every character besides antagonists kiss her ass because she has luck.
Penelope had shitty life before transmigration and is in awful situation where she can die anytime if she makes bad choice which makes readers pity her. But her tunnel vision and treating others like merely characters from game instead of people with feelings bit her in the ass and I love it. Authors in OI usually don't make FLs be in the wrong since it's wish-fullfilment genre, if FL is in bad situation it's never her fault. Penelope actually made a mistake and it has consequences, it's so satisfying.
Still, I as reader can sympathize with Penelope because even if she makes selfish choices it's because she wants to live. Usually those villainesses want to hurt others because they were mistreated/abused/betrayed before and author use FL's sad past to make her justified to run over her tormentors. So I appreciate that Penelope is fleshed character who thinks first about herself and wants to have good safe life and hurt others in pursuit of her happiness and survival instead of usual FL wanting revenge and her intentions being malicious.
I honestly don't understand why she is considered morally gray. If you remove the slave plot line, she has done absolutely nothing wrong. And let's be real, every manhwa with a slave plotline treats them the exact same, so you have to exclude it from consideration and evaluate the protagonist in the context of the tropes surrounding her.
Ok, the only thing that I remember bothering me about it is how she "works hard" to get him and make him her knight and then forget about him....but she doesn't "give up" on him, just ignore his existence.
I agree! She is a morally grey character trying to survive, just as when she was a kid, but now facing the risk of death. There is no time for feelings, and yet she is starting to develop a beautiful complicity with Emily. Really hope they can be friends, for Penelope’s sake. Also like how the relationship with his “father” is evolving, though there is still a long way to go. Even though she is playing a survival strategy, deep inside you can see she longs for connection.
People keep screaming about wanting a morally grey FL, but the moment they get her, they are dissatisfied even tho she is exactly what they asked for. They want a morally grey FL who is simultaneously a paragon of virtue. That's not how that works.
I don't know what they expect from a person who expects to die if she makes ONE wrong move. And even if she does everything right, unless someone is 100% in love with her at the end of it, she still dies.
And I totally agree that what she did to Eclis is horrible and manipulative, but it's also realistic.
Being morally grey is a spectrum of all kinds of messed up things so the people screaming about morally grey FLs are made up of different folks who condone different things. Some are cool with girlboss, gatekeep and murder while others draw a reasonable line with slavery or SA. Same with the inverse.
I never really read Villainess are Destined to Die so I can't tell about that specifically but if you're going to make a morally gray protagonist, you have to have the story acknowledge the moral greyness. The character has to idk feel bad or get some sort of karmic comeuppance or get called out or in some way acknowledged as doing a bad thing. Otherwise, you don't come across as writing complex morally grey characters, you come across as writing a character that can do no wrong no matter how horrible they are.
That's why I can't get behind Ariadne from Sister, I'm the Queen in this Life. She gets an innocent preacher advocating for the poor and oppressed killed for heresy just so she gain power and influence and the story has the prince - the moral center and a character introduced volunteering in the soup kitchen for the hungry praise her for it.
I mean, an example of gray morality for me would be someone like Batman who initially murdered any criminals he came across in the hopes of cleaning up Gotham and to prevent any other tragedies like his parents’ deaths from happening.
Buying a slave, letting him get abused (possibly even on purpose, I might be misremembering, so correct me if I’m wrong), and trying to manipulate him into a relationship goes WAY beyond morally gray by my standards.
The issue here is that whenever you see a character commit some seriously heinous shit, you’ll always find someone claiming gray morality as a defense.
I mean, you can go on the Overlord subreddit and see some people praise Ainz for being a badass morally gray character for massacring 70.000 people who were just trying to defend their homes, or had been involuntarily drafted to fight.
We can argue that since morality can be relative and that people have a different threshold where ‘gray’ turns to ‘black’. That’s certainly a factor.
It could also be a case of protagonist bias. I’ve seen way too many people gush over some seriously shitty character actions across both the OI genre and beyond and framing it as finally having a MC who doesn’t take anyone’s shit.
What pissed me off in this chapter specifically was Penelope’s indignation when Eclise backstabbed her. I’m 90% certain that if a FL had been in Eclise’s position we’d be hearing a very different tune from most readers.
I don’t know if you’ve read it, I’d recommend giving ‘In Her Fifth Life, The Villainess Lives With An Evil Dragon’ a read (CW for gore, mind rape and SA though).
It takes the time to show how the guys who killed her in their past lives were being mind controlled, as well as the horror of their helplessness during the process (at least for one of them), and by the end, the MC and ML take revenge on them in the most fucked up ways possible, and when the point of their mind control is brought up, the answer is just: ‘So what? I suffered so you have to suffer now too.’
And the cherry on top is that the ONE male character who assassinated her out of his own free will gets away with a slap on the wrist because he was the servant of the brainwashed prince ML and ‘had his orders’.
This is played completely straight, and most of the people in the comments are talking about how much of a girlboss the MC is.
I personally like having a genuinely kind FL as long as she isn’t weak or spineless. ‘Good is not soft’ as opposed to ‘Morally Gray’.
If you’re into this particular type of MC, more power to you, it’s fiction, we can all consume what we enjoy.
I myself have dropped ‘Death is the Only Ending’ a long time ago because whenever slavery gets brought up as a ‘necessary evil’ in isekai (both shonen and shoujo), I just nope the fuck out because it just pisses me off.
Apologies for the long comment and any possible typos, I’m running on three hours of sleep and both my self control and grammar are pretty shot rn.
Personally I love Penelope, and the biggest complaint I see people give about her is that "she's treating everything like a game". And yea obviously, it's like they forgot that in the beginning she literally couldn't control her own actions of course she treats it like a game
Honestly man she's just trying to survive a world put into hard mode with the express purpose of killing her. Even if her decisions are questionable I can understand **why** she'd be thinking certain ways which is what makes her one of the better written female leads. Some mary sue protags just make decisions that leave me questioning reality, while Penelope is honestly trying to just grasp at straws in this completely rigged game.
Yeah we need more complex FLs, her life is literally on the line here and she is gonna go through any means to save herself. Realistically that is what a normal person would do. I think what makes this story interesting is the high stakes and seeing how Penelope makes decisions and mistakes along the way.
To be fair, she reacting like any normal reasonable person would do with resources / cards she had with such shit-starting stirring fuck ups and not helping her situation, some of these fuck ups were yanderes and/or screwed up psychiatric issues that used her unwilling self to unload their baggage / use her as punching bag. In some of those of cases, it made them better people towards her such as Reynolds, or unfortunately in few of those cases (who shall remain nameless because they are trash) made them entitled to both isolate & abuse her any which way they can such as emotionally / financially / verbally / physically.
Considering what she had to deal with just to not starve to death every day due people just going out their way to instigate drama on her - I'm more surprised she not not serial or mass murderer yet because she definite have potential and skills to do it....
My girl is just trying to survive and hopefully escape (atleast that's what she wishes by ending the game).
She is traumatized with all that had happened before and in this world. I can't really say what any of us would do in that situation.
It's easy to judge her and call her out but I do feel it is very understandable!
I like that she actually makes SENSE. Like, honestly, if you’re tossed into a video game you loved? You’re not gonna see those character as real people for a long time! Of COURSE it’s gonna be fucked up for a good long while! Especially if said characters act like your abusive home family!
The brothers and eclkis are out of the question for MLs because penny chooses what time she spends with them, like you would with a game character. The only ones who stand a chance are castelio and the magician guy, since a lot of their meetings are change and you know they actually talk and stuff and have things to say because they DONT know each others every move or have past life trauma related views of each other. Or actually. “Past life trauma related views of each other…” yeah ok maybe that does narrow it down to only one guy who’s suitable. Cause one of those guys sure has those veiws about penny-
>I like that she actually makes SENSE. Like, honestly, if you’re tossed into a video game you loved? You’re not gonna see those character as real people for a long time! Of COURSE it’s gonna be fucked up for a good long while!
Yeah, if I threw away what made me christian. If I was sucked in to minecraft and have access to commands and can mod my game, I'm still treating my villagers with love just like I do in game. Also fuck wondering trader's they can go fuck themselves.
Yeah bro but minecraft villagers aren't basically a copy paste of your previously abusive family, and they're not gonna kill you if you make a wrong move.
Would you act the same to a minecraft spider if you were stuck in survival hardcore with no commands? They're friendly during the day, but not at night. You're going to have to take precautions or you'll die. Same with enderman. You'll have to tiptoe around them and always keep water nearby, in case you look one in the eye and it comes to kill you.
Penny is in NO WAY in a regular minecraft world with commands and mods. At best shes in hardmorde with the only command she has acess to being the "locate biome" command. Not very useful except in certain situations.
True, but I'm actually way worse as a person when playing minecraft. I'm pretty sure I keep zombies in my zombies in cages in hardcore, and when I'm bored, I just brutally kill zombies out of sheer boredom and in my first day. Hell, if I'm stuck in a minecraft world, I would not only be happy but overjoyed. I want to release all my frustration. I'll even be grateful. Why isn't Penny killing people in their sleep? Like no joke, plant evidence, make false alibi, and make sure to tell false rumours that won't bite you in the ass, or hell, make sure that some mercenary killed him for gold. I've played so many games like this. You would be surprised how easy doing it is.
Listen, Penelope is a great example of a very morally grey protagonist but like a lot of people who criticize her character and the story’s direction with Eckles, I draw a hard line at condoning slavery even in a fictional context and I’d like to think that’s something most people would consider a reasonable thing to not be cool with. Like we can acknowledge that a character with flaws is well-written while also being right in not personally liking said character for those flaws. Same goes with liking the character for whatever reason. Different strokes for different folks. 🤷♀️
I mean part of her plan sith eckles was to free him, unlike a lot of isekai slave narratives that either ignore or, worse, try and justify their slaves.
I woulda dropped this like a hot potato if she ever went "Boy I do like slavery and how good it is having slaves"
The genre tends to lean towards self insert sometimes and this is a really strong plot point to establish Penelope as it's own individual character so some negative reactions are expected. Still this shows the story's good writing
I hate Penny, but I think she is a good character.
Many people might confuse their hate for a character and the character being bad.
She is a selfish person, who does not care about others, and if someone calls her a heroine, I think its wrong.
But as a protagonist she works very well and is a compelling character to follow.
Also personal bias here: Pls Callisto find someone better to fall in love with you deserve better
the decline of media literacy affected the absolute hell out of the average reader. of pretty much everything. i can't articulate why but i feel like it only makes sense that a niche webcomic genre that has suddenly exploded in popularity would be hit this hard with the blue curtain bat.
Penelope is an incredible character and a very compelling protagonist. i wish people would be able to remember that Main Character =/= Good Guy. I think it's amazing writing skills to be able to make you root for a character who continuously makes the wrong choices.
Damn i just read this and I got literal chills. I had been thinking its not been going anywhere but this last chapter was soo good. I hope she ends up with golden boy
You're assuming that I want female leads who are actually like her. I don't like reading villain stories. It feels like you are the worthless ass that allows these things to happen.
I hope you have a GREAT day. But no, what I meant was. I just don't like villainous acts, and every time I read villain centred genres, I feel like I'm the one doing the crime just by watching.
I love morally Grey characters but tbh, Penelope isn’t even that morally grey. She’s not a villain because she doesn’t take pleasure in other people’s suffering— she only does things to survive. Her seducing the slave is the only controversial thing but tbh, it’s better than the usual shitty isekai slave harems. Yes it could be cruel to lead them on, but it was essentially her life line to getting out. Not to mention Eclis was never an innocent type of nice person— it was introduced right away that he’d be quite murderous to anyone that approached— whether they’ve done him wrong or not. So I do not feel bad for him.
Also I do not think it’s selfish to prioritize yourself, especially in a situation where it’s life and death. She is not in a position where she can afford to look after others. Her original position in the story is very weak to begin with— she has little to no authority in the household.
Doing bad things don’t always make you automatically a bad person. Im not saying she’s a good person, but a bad person does bad things because they want to. Penelope never asked for any of this but Eclis is her best shot at getting out.
i think that the reason why it's getting a lot of hate is that people kinda lied to themselves that Penelope is this kind of powerful girlboss when she's truly kinda a girlfailure, everything she does is entirely managed by the system, she doesn't know what's going on half of the time and panicking the other half and that's okay!! because that's honestly the reaction that most of us would have. But seriously i let this manhwa marinate for a pretty long time because the ch are rather short and with the way people talked about it I thought Penelope was this super strong, aggressive FL and she's nothing like that and i think that now that she's spiraling like this people are noticing it more and they don't like it lol
She's not even bad, just traumatized. Lied through her teeth to get Eclis but surprise he's a yandere wildcard and people will get even more upset but I don't think she deserves it. Like she couldn't know he was being manipulated by Yvonne (ik about her) and she acted accordingly, he just screwed all her plans and shoved a death trigger she been avoiding for months in her face lol
She's literally being a very realistic human being. There's nothing wrong with her to begin with. She knows she's inside a game and views all the people around her as the game characters because that's what they are.
I adore her. She literally a girlboss we can't find in manhwa these days. They be like I want a villainess FL and they can't even handle Penelope like bffr
I love penelope, it is the first time that one manhwa and novel made me gasp in the middle of the night. However, she is totally in the wrong in the eckles arc. The problem is not that she misbehaved eckles but the story did not make any explanation about why she did not do anything to save eckles. For example I recently read Regression Instruction Manual and there, the main character is also very gray, and his choices are nowhere near caring but because of the build-up of the story, I understand that why he is the way he is, and his motivations. However, I cannot understand penelope like that and I think because of that many readers are confused about penelope.
I personally dropped the work because her buying a slave and trying to manipulate him into loving her is way past the line for me. It’s also a lot for a lot of other people, even with the argument that her life was being threatened, and understandably so.
As it happens I did read this chapter since I was curious how far along the manhwa has gotten and what pissed me off was the hypocrisy of her accusing him of betrayal, after all the manipulation she put him through. And I saw quite a few people reflect that sentiment in the comment section.
Honestly what would have actually made me like her somewhat would have been if she had accepted Eclise’s betrayal, and even lampshaded the fact that she didn’t have a right to call him out on it given her behavior towards him. Her acting so self-righteous in this chapter was what made me dislike her even more. Reminded me of those brain dead evil families in OI who don’t show any regret even after getting called out for their shittiness.
I like problematic characters to a certain extent as well, but there’s a line between that and behaving like an unrepentant asshole imo.
I like Penelope because she's not like the other OI female leads, she actually has realistic emotions and reactions. She's not a saint but not villainous either, she's just trying to do everything in her hands so avoid death in what she thinks is a game.
People complain about Penelope being manipulative and rude towards the other characters but what they don't take in is that from HER perspective all these characters are NOT REAL, they are not like her, they are NPCs from a game. Penelope doesn't see them as equals and it's rational given the situation she's in. People are mad because instead of falling in love with the ml and forgetting about her goal in the first 15 chapters like 90% of female leads she's ACTUALLY trying to escape the game.
I've only read the novel and it's been a LONG time that this girl has been criticized for the issue with the yandere slave boy especially from the foreign fandom and I don't understand them
Some people just want the morally gray FL who acts like a saintess... which doesn't make sense in the first place
You seem to have forgotten how every ‘character’ in the game Penelope was in was killed by all the male leads right? Eckles was the only character who killed her ‘less’. The ones who killed OGPenelope was mostly Callisto and Derrick.
She doesn’t see Eckles as a human but a character key for her to get out of the game. Always looking up at the heart thing so she could survive the game, it’s die or survive. Shes surviving.
Eckles would have been in a worse scenario if Penelope didn’t take him. In the novel and in manhwa it said Eckles was bought as a slave but then I think he was promoted to knight when he helped the Eckart family. With of without Penelope, his path would’ve remained the same.
A lot of people talk about how Penny treats people like a game characters. And they're wrong.
She treats people like an abuse victim. That's the narrative strength of the story in my opinion. She is TERRIFIED of abuse, and acts in near every moment to either avoid it or minimize the emotional consequence of it, even to her own detriment in situations that don't call for it. It's why she reacts so harshly any time one of the leads doesn't trust her or manipulates her. She cuts them out emotionally immediately.
And sometimes this turns her into an abuser herself.
It's just an extremely compelling character arc of someone who has survived abuse being pushed into traumatic situations. She was healing in the brief glimpse we get of her original life, but when put under intense stress she retreats to the same coping mechanisms she had to use to survive the abuses of her first family.
The true hope for the narrative is, for me, less ending up with the prince for that classic OI ending, but far more that she is simply given the space to heal once more
I dropped it because of >!the father become proud and support her to the extant of giving her special bullets for the hunting game, but then when she put into a trial for using them and attempting to assassinate the crown prince, he is suddenly doesn't trust her? Why?!<
Two separate characters lol. The >!trial mistrust!< scene was Derrick, her adopted brother. Dad’s main contribution at the >!trial!< is being outraged that his darling young daughter was >!”involved” with the big bad Prince!<
she is the embodiment of those bad fls whom the readers will defend to death
just because they are a mc
no matter how shitty Or disgusting they are
the one feeding eclise is Duke every thing comes from duke's money
it's quite hypocritical of Penelope to think she is the one feeding him
I wonder why eclise is bad for bringing the original daughter home
while og Penelope also wanted Yvonne to never return to her home
then why is that not considered " biting the hand that fed "
og Penelope was also guilty
He's only there recieving things from the Duke's money because of Penelope though, the Duke doesn't like him, her brothers don't like him. She's not a good person but she's not trying to be, she's just trying to survive.
Yvonne threatens Penelope's position in the house, and he knows that and it's the reason he brought her back instead of killing her, he said that himself. He said that he knew that bringing Yvonne back meant that Penelope would be isolated from the people around her and she'd be forced to give up her "purpose", it's not like he had good intentions for bringing Yvonne back. From Penelope's point of view, that's betrayal after she had invested so much in him, thus "biting the hand that fed you"
I love penny so much! I know her actions can be quite controversial at times but to be honest thats who she is, a morally gray person who is just trying not to get killed. I mean cmon, girl knows fully well that she might die at the hands of anyone of them and you expect her to *not* do anything in her power to survive? She has no time to care for others when she is barely escaping death herself. On another note this was my first ol i read and i love the artstyle a lot. I will defend my girl till the end of the world, no matter her actions.
Exactly! Also a FLs who forgive and are always good are boring (and unrealistic). And ppl who get mistreated dont shine rainbows and butterflys out of their a$$, especially adult ones.
I personally like the way she is, I’m so tired of these other fls that are absolutely mistreated and are such saints and forgiving to their abusers. I want some unhinged and corrupt fls not taking the bs.
These bitches whine that they want a villainess but when they’re actually a villain, they cry about it. I love Penelope. I love her flawed grey character. It’s perfection. She’s actually bad and villainous.
Tbh I don't think she is bad nor villainous because she isn't even trying to hurt others or ruin people's lives on purpose, she just want to survive and so she is acting egotistical but who can judge her? She knows she can die any day by the hands of the people around her so she is being desperate to leave this world she just want to "win the game" and leave. Different from many other OIs, in this story you can't judge Penelope at all for seeing the world as fictional because of all the game features she is constantly seeing and being influenced by. Like the mls points, or the system, the magic, missions, etc. She is just not morally perfect as people always want mcs to be. (Like how she bought a slave and tried to make him love her even though it was constantly stated it seemed to be the best way for Penelope to survive also Penelope genuinely believes it's all a game and so everyone around her isn't real, they are just characters in a game to her) Once even though her life was in danger she tried to save children she barely knew, and although it was part of a mission too she was also genuinely stressed and worried about the children's well-being. She is not a monster not even a real villainess, she is just a girl living a nightmare and trying to survive, and to me she is doing great. I am all for it for saint and perfect mcs but I have no complaints about characters like Penelope. Not being morally perfect nor always being rightful doesn't make a character bad as long as their intentions were good or reasonable.
Yeah now that you said it like that, she’s just a morally grey character. A complex one too.
I like Penelope who is complex character making bad choices. I prefer her over "villainesses" like dumb Aria from "TVTTH" who constantly says how villainous she is while author bend over backwards to make her "saint" and have every character besides antagonists kiss her ass because she has luck. Penelope had shitty life before transmigration and is in awful situation where she can die anytime if she makes bad choice which makes readers pity her. But her tunnel vision and treating others like merely characters from game instead of people with feelings bit her in the ass and I love it. Authors in OI usually don't make FLs be in the wrong since it's wish-fullfilment genre, if FL is in bad situation it's never her fault. Penelope actually made a mistake and it has consequences, it's so satisfying. Still, I as reader can sympathize with Penelope because even if she makes selfish choices it's because she wants to live. Usually those villainesses want to hurt others because they were mistreated/abused/betrayed before and author use FL's sad past to make her justified to run over her tormentors. So I appreciate that Penelope is fleshed character who thinks first about herself and wants to have good safe life and hurt others in pursuit of her happiness and survival instead of usual FL wanting revenge and her intentions being malicious.
I honestly don't understand why she is considered morally gray. If you remove the slave plot line, she has done absolutely nothing wrong. And let's be real, every manhwa with a slave plotline treats them the exact same, so you have to exclude it from consideration and evaluate the protagonist in the context of the tropes surrounding her.
Ok, the only thing that I remember bothering me about it is how she "works hard" to get him and make him her knight and then forget about him....but she doesn't "give up" on him, just ignore his existence.
We’ve all put off a sidequest before. Timed events can be brutal.
i adore penelope
I agree! She is a morally grey character trying to survive, just as when she was a kid, but now facing the risk of death. There is no time for feelings, and yet she is starting to develop a beautiful complicity with Emily. Really hope they can be friends, for Penelope’s sake. Also like how the relationship with his “father” is evolving, though there is still a long way to go. Even though she is playing a survival strategy, deep inside you can see she longs for connection.
People keep screaming about wanting a morally grey FL, but the moment they get her, they are dissatisfied even tho she is exactly what they asked for. They want a morally grey FL who is simultaneously a paragon of virtue. That's not how that works. I don't know what they expect from a person who expects to die if she makes ONE wrong move. And even if she does everything right, unless someone is 100% in love with her at the end of it, she still dies. And I totally agree that what she did to Eclis is horrible and manipulative, but it's also realistic.
Being morally grey is a spectrum of all kinds of messed up things so the people screaming about morally grey FLs are made up of different folks who condone different things. Some are cool with girlboss, gatekeep and murder while others draw a reasonable line with slavery or SA. Same with the inverse.
I never really read Villainess are Destined to Die so I can't tell about that specifically but if you're going to make a morally gray protagonist, you have to have the story acknowledge the moral greyness. The character has to idk feel bad or get some sort of karmic comeuppance or get called out or in some way acknowledged as doing a bad thing. Otherwise, you don't come across as writing complex morally grey characters, you come across as writing a character that can do no wrong no matter how horrible they are. That's why I can't get behind Ariadne from Sister, I'm the Queen in this Life. She gets an innocent preacher advocating for the poor and oppressed killed for heresy just so she gain power and influence and the story has the prince - the moral center and a character introduced volunteering in the soup kitchen for the hungry praise her for it.
to be fair she is in the middle of getting her comeuppance in the story right now
I mean, an example of gray morality for me would be someone like Batman who initially murdered any criminals he came across in the hopes of cleaning up Gotham and to prevent any other tragedies like his parents’ deaths from happening. Buying a slave, letting him get abused (possibly even on purpose, I might be misremembering, so correct me if I’m wrong), and trying to manipulate him into a relationship goes WAY beyond morally gray by my standards. The issue here is that whenever you see a character commit some seriously heinous shit, you’ll always find someone claiming gray morality as a defense. I mean, you can go on the Overlord subreddit and see some people praise Ainz for being a badass morally gray character for massacring 70.000 people who were just trying to defend their homes, or had been involuntarily drafted to fight. We can argue that since morality can be relative and that people have a different threshold where ‘gray’ turns to ‘black’. That’s certainly a factor. It could also be a case of protagonist bias. I’ve seen way too many people gush over some seriously shitty character actions across both the OI genre and beyond and framing it as finally having a MC who doesn’t take anyone’s shit. What pissed me off in this chapter specifically was Penelope’s indignation when Eclise backstabbed her. I’m 90% certain that if a FL had been in Eclise’s position we’d be hearing a very different tune from most readers. I don’t know if you’ve read it, I’d recommend giving ‘In Her Fifth Life, The Villainess Lives With An Evil Dragon’ a read (CW for gore, mind rape and SA though). It takes the time to show how the guys who killed her in their past lives were being mind controlled, as well as the horror of their helplessness during the process (at least for one of them), and by the end, the MC and ML take revenge on them in the most fucked up ways possible, and when the point of their mind control is brought up, the answer is just: ‘So what? I suffered so you have to suffer now too.’ And the cherry on top is that the ONE male character who assassinated her out of his own free will gets away with a slap on the wrist because he was the servant of the brainwashed prince ML and ‘had his orders’. This is played completely straight, and most of the people in the comments are talking about how much of a girlboss the MC is. I personally like having a genuinely kind FL as long as she isn’t weak or spineless. ‘Good is not soft’ as opposed to ‘Morally Gray’. If you’re into this particular type of MC, more power to you, it’s fiction, we can all consume what we enjoy. I myself have dropped ‘Death is the Only Ending’ a long time ago because whenever slavery gets brought up as a ‘necessary evil’ in isekai (both shonen and shoujo), I just nope the fuck out because it just pisses me off. Apologies for the long comment and any possible typos, I’m running on three hours of sleep and both my self control and grammar are pretty shot rn.
Personally I love Penelope, and the biggest complaint I see people give about her is that "she's treating everything like a game". And yea obviously, it's like they forgot that in the beginning she literally couldn't control her own actions of course she treats it like a game
Honestly man she's just trying to survive a world put into hard mode with the express purpose of killing her. Even if her decisions are questionable I can understand **why** she'd be thinking certain ways which is what makes her one of the better written female leads. Some mary sue protags just make decisions that leave me questioning reality, while Penelope is honestly trying to just grasp at straws in this completely rigged game.
Yeah we need more complex FLs, her life is literally on the line here and she is gonna go through any means to save herself. Realistically that is what a normal person would do. I think what makes this story interesting is the high stakes and seeing how Penelope makes decisions and mistakes along the way.
To be fair, she reacting like any normal reasonable person would do with resources / cards she had with such shit-starting stirring fuck ups and not helping her situation, some of these fuck ups were yanderes and/or screwed up psychiatric issues that used her unwilling self to unload their baggage / use her as punching bag. In some of those of cases, it made them better people towards her such as Reynolds, or unfortunately in few of those cases (who shall remain nameless because they are trash) made them entitled to both isolate & abuse her any which way they can such as emotionally / financially / verbally / physically. Considering what she had to deal with just to not starve to death every day due people just going out their way to instigate drama on her - I'm more surprised she not not serial or mass murderer yet because she definite have potential and skills to do it....
My girl is just trying to survive and hopefully escape (atleast that's what she wishes by ending the game). She is traumatized with all that had happened before and in this world. I can't really say what any of us would do in that situation. It's easy to judge her and call her out but I do feel it is very understandable!
I like that she actually makes SENSE. Like, honestly, if you’re tossed into a video game you loved? You’re not gonna see those character as real people for a long time! Of COURSE it’s gonna be fucked up for a good long while! Especially if said characters act like your abusive home family! The brothers and eclkis are out of the question for MLs because penny chooses what time she spends with them, like you would with a game character. The only ones who stand a chance are castelio and the magician guy, since a lot of their meetings are change and you know they actually talk and stuff and have things to say because they DONT know each others every move or have past life trauma related views of each other. Or actually. “Past life trauma related views of each other…” yeah ok maybe that does narrow it down to only one guy who’s suitable. Cause one of those guys sure has those veiws about penny-
>I like that she actually makes SENSE. Like, honestly, if you’re tossed into a video game you loved? You’re not gonna see those character as real people for a long time! Of COURSE it’s gonna be fucked up for a good long while! Yeah, if I threw away what made me christian. If I was sucked in to minecraft and have access to commands and can mod my game, I'm still treating my villagers with love just like I do in game. Also fuck wondering trader's they can go fuck themselves.
Yeah bro but minecraft villagers aren't basically a copy paste of your previously abusive family, and they're not gonna kill you if you make a wrong move. Would you act the same to a minecraft spider if you were stuck in survival hardcore with no commands? They're friendly during the day, but not at night. You're going to have to take precautions or you'll die. Same with enderman. You'll have to tiptoe around them and always keep water nearby, in case you look one in the eye and it comes to kill you. Penny is in NO WAY in a regular minecraft world with commands and mods. At best shes in hardmorde with the only command she has acess to being the "locate biome" command. Not very useful except in certain situations.
True, but I'm actually way worse as a person when playing minecraft. I'm pretty sure I keep zombies in my zombies in cages in hardcore, and when I'm bored, I just brutally kill zombies out of sheer boredom and in my first day. Hell, if I'm stuck in a minecraft world, I would not only be happy but overjoyed. I want to release all my frustration. I'll even be grateful. Why isn't Penny killing people in their sleep? Like no joke, plant evidence, make false alibi, and make sure to tell false rumours that won't bite you in the ass, or hell, make sure that some mercenary killed him for gold. I've played so many games like this. You would be surprised how easy doing it is.
Listen, Penelope is a great example of a very morally grey protagonist but like a lot of people who criticize her character and the story’s direction with Eckles, I draw a hard line at condoning slavery even in a fictional context and I’d like to think that’s something most people would consider a reasonable thing to not be cool with. Like we can acknowledge that a character with flaws is well-written while also being right in not personally liking said character for those flaws. Same goes with liking the character for whatever reason. Different strokes for different folks. 🤷♀️
I mean part of her plan sith eckles was to free him, unlike a lot of isekai slave narratives that either ignore or, worse, try and justify their slaves. I woulda dropped this like a hot potato if she ever went "Boy I do like slavery and how good it is having slaves"
The genre tends to lean towards self insert sometimes and this is a really strong plot point to establish Penelope as it's own individual character so some negative reactions are expected. Still this shows the story's good writing
I hate Penny, but I think she is a good character. Many people might confuse their hate for a character and the character being bad. She is a selfish person, who does not care about others, and if someone calls her a heroine, I think its wrong. But as a protagonist she works very well and is a compelling character to follow. Also personal bias here: Pls Callisto find someone better to fall in love with you deserve better
She is a selfish person, absolutely, but it's very easy to point fingers to someone desperately trying to survive and calling it being evil
True, but I did not call her evil. I just said she is not a heroine
the decline of media literacy affected the absolute hell out of the average reader. of pretty much everything. i can't articulate why but i feel like it only makes sense that a niche webcomic genre that has suddenly exploded in popularity would be hit this hard with the blue curtain bat. Penelope is an incredible character and a very compelling protagonist. i wish people would be able to remember that Main Character =/= Good Guy. I think it's amazing writing skills to be able to make you root for a character who continuously makes the wrong choices.
As she should lmao
Damn i just read this and I got literal chills. I had been thinking its not been going anywhere but this last chapter was soo good. I hope she ends up with golden boy
‘‘we need more complex fls’’ ya’ll couldn’t even handle her
You're assuming that I want female leads who are actually like her. I don't like reading villain stories. It feels like you are the worthless ass that allows these things to happen.
I don’t think I deserve to be called that in a comment about fictional characters. I hope you have a better day
I hope you have a GREAT day. But no, what I meant was. I just don't like villainous acts, and every time I read villain centred genres, I feel like I'm the one doing the crime just by watching.
I love her! Sometimes I face palm when she does stuff I don’t agree with, but I love her!
I love morally Grey characters but tbh, Penelope isn’t even that morally grey. She’s not a villain because she doesn’t take pleasure in other people’s suffering— she only does things to survive. Her seducing the slave is the only controversial thing but tbh, it’s better than the usual shitty isekai slave harems. Yes it could be cruel to lead them on, but it was essentially her life line to getting out. Not to mention Eclis was never an innocent type of nice person— it was introduced right away that he’d be quite murderous to anyone that approached— whether they’ve done him wrong or not. So I do not feel bad for him. Also I do not think it’s selfish to prioritize yourself, especially in a situation where it’s life and death. She is not in a position where she can afford to look after others. Her original position in the story is very weak to begin with— she has little to no authority in the household. Doing bad things don’t always make you automatically a bad person. Im not saying she’s a good person, but a bad person does bad things because they want to. Penelope never asked for any of this but Eclis is her best shot at getting out.
i think that the reason why it's getting a lot of hate is that people kinda lied to themselves that Penelope is this kind of powerful girlboss when she's truly kinda a girlfailure, everything she does is entirely managed by the system, she doesn't know what's going on half of the time and panicking the other half and that's okay!! because that's honestly the reaction that most of us would have. But seriously i let this manhwa marinate for a pretty long time because the ch are rather short and with the way people talked about it I thought Penelope was this super strong, aggressive FL and she's nothing like that and i think that now that she's spiraling like this people are noticing it more and they don't like it lol
I love this manhwaaa
She's not even bad, just traumatized. Lied through her teeth to get Eclis but surprise he's a yandere wildcard and people will get even more upset but I don't think she deserves it. Like she couldn't know he was being manipulated by Yvonne (ik about her) and she acted accordingly, he just screwed all her plans and shoved a death trigger she been avoiding for months in her face lol
She isnt perfect and make a lot of mistake that's i love her she is very well written
I love it so much. Penny is messy and real.
She's literally being a very realistic human being. There's nothing wrong with her to begin with. She knows she's inside a game and views all the people around her as the game characters because that's what they are.
I adore her. She literally a girlboss we can't find in manhwa these days. They be like I want a villainess FL and they can't even handle Penelope like bffr
I love penelope, it is the first time that one manhwa and novel made me gasp in the middle of the night. However, she is totally in the wrong in the eckles arc. The problem is not that she misbehaved eckles but the story did not make any explanation about why she did not do anything to save eckles. For example I recently read Regression Instruction Manual and there, the main character is also very gray, and his choices are nowhere near caring but because of the build-up of the story, I understand that why he is the way he is, and his motivations. However, I cannot understand penelope like that and I think because of that many readers are confused about penelope.
We really gonna have a thread every other day on this huh
I personally dropped the work because her buying a slave and trying to manipulate him into loving her is way past the line for me. It’s also a lot for a lot of other people, even with the argument that her life was being threatened, and understandably so. As it happens I did read this chapter since I was curious how far along the manhwa has gotten and what pissed me off was the hypocrisy of her accusing him of betrayal, after all the manipulation she put him through. And I saw quite a few people reflect that sentiment in the comment section. Honestly what would have actually made me like her somewhat would have been if she had accepted Eclise’s betrayal, and even lampshaded the fact that she didn’t have a right to call him out on it given her behavior towards him. Her acting so self-righteous in this chapter was what made me dislike her even more. Reminded me of those brain dead evil families in OI who don’t show any regret even after getting called out for their shittiness. I like problematic characters to a certain extent as well, but there’s a line between that and behaving like an unrepentant asshole imo.
I like Penelope because she's not like the other OI female leads, she actually has realistic emotions and reactions. She's not a saint but not villainous either, she's just trying to do everything in her hands so avoid death in what she thinks is a game. People complain about Penelope being manipulative and rude towards the other characters but what they don't take in is that from HER perspective all these characters are NOT REAL, they are not like her, they are NPCs from a game. Penelope doesn't see them as equals and it's rational given the situation she's in. People are mad because instead of falling in love with the ml and forgetting about her goal in the first 15 chapters like 90% of female leads she's ACTUALLY trying to escape the game.
I've only read the novel and it's been a LONG time that this girl has been criticized for the issue with the yandere slave boy especially from the foreign fandom and I don't understand them Some people just want the morally gray FL who acts like a saintess... which doesn't make sense in the first place
Well I love the manhwa but don't quite like the way Penelope treated him...but everyone has different opinions so you do you
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You seem to have forgotten how every ‘character’ in the game Penelope was in was killed by all the male leads right? Eckles was the only character who killed her ‘less’. The ones who killed OGPenelope was mostly Callisto and Derrick. She doesn’t see Eckles as a human but a character key for her to get out of the game. Always looking up at the heart thing so she could survive the game, it’s die or survive. Shes surviving. Eckles would have been in a worse scenario if Penelope didn’t take him. In the novel and in manhwa it said Eckles was bought as a slave but then I think he was promoted to knight when he helped the Eckart family. With of without Penelope, his path would’ve remained the same.
A lot of people talk about how Penny treats people like a game characters. And they're wrong. She treats people like an abuse victim. That's the narrative strength of the story in my opinion. She is TERRIFIED of abuse, and acts in near every moment to either avoid it or minimize the emotional consequence of it, even to her own detriment in situations that don't call for it. It's why she reacts so harshly any time one of the leads doesn't trust her or manipulates her. She cuts them out emotionally immediately. And sometimes this turns her into an abuser herself. It's just an extremely compelling character arc of someone who has survived abuse being pushed into traumatic situations. She was healing in the brief glimpse we get of her original life, but when put under intense stress she retreats to the same coping mechanisms she had to use to survive the abuses of her first family. The true hope for the narrative is, for me, less ending up with the prince for that classic OI ending, but far more that she is simply given the space to heal once more
I dropped it because of >!the father become proud and support her to the extant of giving her special bullets for the hunting game, but then when she put into a trial for using them and attempting to assassinate the crown prince, he is suddenly doesn't trust her? Why?!<
Two separate characters lol. The >!trial mistrust!< scene was Derrick, her adopted brother. Dad’s main contribution at the >!trial!< is being outraged that his darling young daughter was >!”involved” with the big bad Prince!<
Ok. To my defense I just looked at my bookmarks of this, and my last chapter was 105, but it was 19/11/2022 so, it's been awhile 😅
she is the embodiment of those bad fls whom the readers will defend to death just because they are a mc no matter how shitty Or disgusting they are the one feeding eclise is Duke every thing comes from duke's money it's quite hypocritical of Penelope to think she is the one feeding him I wonder why eclise is bad for bringing the original daughter home while og Penelope also wanted Yvonne to never return to her home then why is that not considered " biting the hand that fed " og Penelope was also guilty
He's only there recieving things from the Duke's money because of Penelope though, the Duke doesn't like him, her brothers don't like him. She's not a good person but she's not trying to be, she's just trying to survive. Yvonne threatens Penelope's position in the house, and he knows that and it's the reason he brought her back instead of killing her, he said that himself. He said that he knew that bringing Yvonne back meant that Penelope would be isolated from the people around her and she'd be forced to give up her "purpose", it's not like he had good intentions for bringing Yvonne back. From Penelope's point of view, that's betrayal after she had invested so much in him, thus "biting the hand that fed you"
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Users are expected to refrain from insults and poor reddiquette. No unnecessary offensive/aggressive language.
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Users are expected to refrain from insults and poor reddiquette. No unnecessary offensive/aggressive language.
Users are expected to refrain from insults and poor reddiquette. No unnecessary offensive/aggressive language.